overcoming irrational thoughts and doing the right thing

Cedric?  Wherever did Beagles get that idea?  But you know me, I am a relentless searcher after the truth, and unlike some of us here on the blog, I don't hew to beliefs that I carved into stone when I was in my mid-twenties, so I was off to the google, and I typed in ce and Cecil the Lion popped right up in the suggestions.  I might at this point, have pointed out, that had I indeed been wrong about the name of the late king of beasts, and not bothered to check up on it because I thought that the guy thinking that it was Cedric was a member of that thoughtless tribe of tea partiers, and therefore didn't know shit, why then I would have continued to be wrong.

The skinny on the death of Cecil is that the dentist was paying guides who dragged a carcass behind their jeep to tempt Cecil off the protected reservation where the dentist shot him with an arrow which didn't kill him so they tracked him down and shot him to death.  I don't know who administered the final shots. 

Last I heard the dentist claimed he didn't know he was breaking any laws.  It sounds a little hard to believe, dragging a carcass and all that he didn't, but say he didn't.  Say as a matter of fact he was doing it legally.  I am sure there is some legal way to do it, by paying a lot of money which will go towards preservation of African wildlife, and I guess that is alright if it results in there being more big wildlife than there would be otherwise. 

But I wonder what is going through the heads of these big game hunters.  They certainly aren't going to eat what they kill, and they certainly aren't restoring any balance of nature because all these animals are endangered, and they are certainly not doing anything bold because they travel with an armed guard, and they are certainly not displaying any tracking skills because their armed guard is leading them to the prey and pointing out to them where to shoot.

So all they are really doing is putting a bullet or an arrow into the heart of some big beast and ending its life, not much different than a firing squad, except that with the firing squad the victim is often guilty of something. 

So that's it.  I'm not necessarily saying they should arrest the guy or anything.  I'm just saying there is something wrong with him.  And maybe I am being a little irrational here.  Right now in my own home town I am sure that somebody is murdering someone else, most likely for no very good reason, and though I certainly think it's wrong, and hope the miscreant faces due justice, I am not getting all worked up about it.  I guess it's two things and one of them is that city slicker notion of animals being basically innocent, not having bitten of the apple maybe (though of course I don't believe that, I am just being literary), and people generally are not innocent for very long.  The other thing is maybe just the way they pose with their dead prey, like ain't they something.  Just sticks in my craw is all.

Speaking of being irrational, let's go to your aversion against gays.  Myself, the shining liberal in the tower in the big city, I always wince in movies when they have a couple gay guys kissing.  Yuck.  But there it is, in a way we can't control our emotions, sometimes somebody just pisses us off, but you can control your actions, you don't need to punch the guy.  So likeways with the gays, maybe you shudder at their perverted lust, nothing to be done about that, but say somewhere down the line you get to cast your vote for or against gay marriage, here is something you can control.  I'm not going to make the argument here, but say you had a logical debate about gay marriage, say on some famous blog, and at the end you realized that legalizing gay marriage would make for a more stable nation and generally happier people all around, then wouldn't you, as a good citizen, have to cast your vote in favor of it?

Sort of like I despise those big game hunter types, but it they wanted to put up a big game park somewhere in the state, and the net result would be that even though some magnificent animals would end up with their heads on some jagoff's wall, more would get to romp and stomp and generally look magnificent if we allowed the park than if we didn't, well I would have to vote for that big game park.